


Brave New Girls

by FreshBrains



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, F/F, Five Wives Week, Girls Like Girls Ficathon, POV Capable, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Starting Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4717532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And that just left Capable. Quiet, handy little Capable with her fire-red hair and drawn mouth, the one who raised the Boys from childhood and tried to make them better than just mindless followers, the one who felt she didn’t have a purpose in this brave new world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brave New Girls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).



> For Capable Day of Five Wives Week on Tumblr as well as the Girls Like Girls Ficathon prompt by evewithanapple: _Angharad/Capable, to start a life and maybe change the world_.

Capable wakes every night in a sheen of sweat, her harsh breath clattering into the room, the nightmare fading away from the edges of her vision. She looks around, takes inventory—her room is small and sparsely decorated with a roll-top desk and chest of drawers, her curtains pale pink, her framed photo of the girls atop her night table.

Joe and his roaming hands and Cheshire cat smile are nothing but memories.

The clock always reads sometime between midnight and two in the morning—the witching hours, as Miss Giddy used to say. Now they just feel like a prison sentence. Capable sits up and tugs on her plush bathrobe. She and Angharad bought them at Wal-Mart, two of the same robes, because they were so deliciously soft and luxurious, so different from the simple, coarse garments Joe dressed them in. Then she goes to Angharad’s room.

Angharad is always awake in those hours. She refuses to sleep and give in to the satisfaction of the nightmare that used to visit her as well. Her bedroom is the same size and shape with a comfortable chair in the corner for reading, and when Capable peers through the crack in the door, she sees her Angharad sitting with her legs curled up to her chest, reading glasses perched at the tip of her nose, a book open in her hands.

Angharad smiles softly and sets down her book. “Nightmares again?” Capable nods and steps inside, instantly calming in the warm, yellowish light coming from Angharad’s lamp. “Come sit with me.”

Capable curls up next to Angharad in the big chair. Her body isn’t as small as it used to be when Joe had them on rations—her hips have filled out, her face has rounded fully like it was when she was a little girl. Angharad is still slim, but she practically glows with health now that she’s free to eat the foods she loves. Her caesarean scar is dark and visible beneath her thin cotton tank top, and Capable strokes it gently with her index finger. Angharad doesn’t mind it. “I can almost smell him,” Capable says, burying her face in Angharad’s neck. “It just won’t go away.”

Angharad sighs, taking off her eyeglasses. She wraps her arm around Capable’s shoulders. “Remember what the doctor said? It’ll take time. And now that we’re free, we’ve got _lots_ of time.” She glances at her night table where there is a small framed photo of the baby, the little one she gave up for adoption after they got out. She doesn’t know his name, only his face.

(Capable knows his name. It’s Thomas. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever tell Angharad or if Angharad even wants to know).

Capable glances over to see Angharad’s book— _The Bell Jar_ by Sylvia Plath. Despite their lack of education in Joe’s “Citadel,” Angharad was an excellent reader and devoured all the literature she could get. The Dag preferred erotic novels, the pages of lush sex scenes and descriptive kissing sending her into sweet dreams, but Angharad claimed she’d had enough sex (“ _Not_ sex, _rape_ ,” Toast says with clenched teeth, and they _know_ , Angharad knows, but she is still so very afraid of that terrible word) for a lifetime and that she’d rather read about what happens when sex is _not_ happening.

Capable doesn’t read any books because she _can’t_ read, was never allowed. But her sisters—and Angharad, who is something different than a sister now—are teaching her, and so is Miss Giddy, who still comes by once in a while, and she and Cheedo see a tutor who helps them with things like finances, science, and letters.

“Is this book for college?” Capable plays with the frayed pages of the novel.

“No,” Angharad says, smiling. “Just for fun.” She’s already passed her GED classes and is taking courses in literature and political science at the community college, something Capable can hardly dream of. They barely allow her to help out part-time at the church daycare after she passed her mental health exams, citing she might be a _danger_ to the children, as if she wasn’t formerly a child who’d had much of that danger done to herself.

The only thing Capable understood was children. Angharad understood _everything_. She was going to make something of herself, of _them_ , of all of them and the women and boys Joe kept under his iron grip for so many years.

“Fun,” Capable says, a huff of irony in her voice. “I still don’t know how to do that. To _have_ that.”

The Dag began having fun right after they got out—she loved parties and clubs, wearing nice clothes, staying out late. She kept boyfriends and girlfriends. Toast was quieter, and since she was the only girl who still had family looking for her in the world, she moved back across the country and didn’t see her sisters very often. Cheedo was still a little girl with plenty of life left ahead of her, and the kind couple who secreted them away from Joe’s world adopted her as their beloved daughter, hoping to help her finish her girlhood years in peace, prosperity, and true love.

And that just left Capable. Quiet, handy little Capable with her fire-red hair and drawn mouth, the one who raised the Boys from childhood and tried to make them better than just mindless followers, the one who felt she didn’t have a purpose in this brave new world.

“You will learn,” Angharad says firmly, pressing a kiss to the crown of Capable’s head. She gives kisses sparingly, and never for romance or passion. Kisses are like little jewels to her—precious and rare and always well-deserved. “We have a lifetime to learn.”

“Will you always stay with me, my Angharad?” Capable’s voice is small. She wants to take it back, suck the words from the air, but Angharad just tightens her arms, holding her closer.

“Always, my love. This is _our_ world now, and we will learn it together.”


End file.
